Showing posts with label Inferno challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inferno challenge. Show all posts

28 June 2010

First Embrace

This post is in response to The Inferno prompt: embrace. It is offered in the hope it will be helpful to another woman who has known the taste of  such regret.


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikPGfGCYbXtJiEmaTVDaPFuW2Fwe1c1KkgqdtmaluhyphenhyphenX1BfQeAHQxfsdx1n9X7IxjrwIvE6lSPhli_P4FCtgaBDkHipHglPsik-7LMRdk7GAKaBASBWnNYRG6qHyDNfzxHeCqqYABTK_0/s1600/the+gift_lrg.jpg*

First Embrace

I wish I could say I knew
what was happening in my body.
It is my body. I am a nurse.
The pain was intermittent, insistent,
signaled something wrong with my pregnancy,
sent me to the hospital.
But I'd never felt it before
so I turned on my stomach
to ease the pain as I waked off and on
through the night.

I wish I could say I knew
what was happening in my body as I woke that night
and urgently went to the toilet.
A nurse had put a container covering half the toilet.
"Why?", I wondered.

I wish I could say
I picked up that tiny girl
in the white plastic container,
held her and whispered what I thought:
"I'm sorry I failed to carry you long enough for you to live."

She looked so perfect as I stared at her
but she didn't breathe or move her limbs.
And all I did was stare,
never touched her.
And for every day thereafter
I wondered how I didn't do this simple thing-
embrace my daughter,
name her.

I wish I could say that I told that secret
sought help for that remorse
magnifying my grief,
forgave myself, didn't have guilt
that sleeping on my stomach caused the miscarriage,
didn't have nightmares for years 
about forgetting crucial things.

What I can say
is that it took until I was 50
in therapy over another loss for all that to come flooding back.
I grabbed the chance to do it again,
do it as I wished I had done it then-
hold that baby in my arms
greet her, say good-bye, name her-
name her wish, name her love,
name her free.


Mary H Warren




*Thanks to Vikki North at The Red Chair Gallery for her art piece which so beautifully illustrates this poem and which she kindly agreed to my using.

And thanks to Ruth at Rumi Days for the synchronicity of the Rumi poem today "The Bright Core of Failure" which speaks directly and beautifully to this experience.





21 May 2010

Portrait of a Writer


This is in response to the prompt: "Portrait of a Writer" from the Inferno at the Artist Challenge.


Writers

arrange words with assurance
calculated to break open minds,
a conspiracy of words
intended to lay bare the heart.
Writers decipher life, give back our breath.

When given chaos, writers make maps,
an overview when view is overwhelming.
When words elude, writers invade life in search of them.
They spot new words, ascribe powers to them,
chant them again and again,
and they work magic.

Selected words
cast upon the wind of breath
astound, confound and dazzle,
a deluge of words
to electrify, jolt and startle.

Writers devise words, revere words, mint words,
make veracity vivid.
Writers controvert and make a difference.
Some maintain, some negate, some rupture,
some pronounce their pounce
then take it.

Writers speak up , speak out and witness.
They touch, invoke, invite.
Writers slip from the pack
wipe lipstick from their mouths
splash speech across the page
ignite sparks to blaze
full of flame.

Mary H Warren 20/5/10